


Goes to Show You Never Can Tell...

by dasyatidae



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Dates, Las Vegas Wedding, Love at First Sight, M/M, Meet-Cute, Opposites Attract, San Francisco, a caper, a romp, some goofy sit com hijinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-07-02 12:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15796386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae
Summary: Tommy's a waspy lawyer, Lovett's a free spirit. When they meet on public transit, it's love at first sight. What could possibly go wrong?A Lovett & Tommy pastiche of the pilot episode of Dharma & Greg. :)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beginningwithA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beginningwithA/gifts).



> For beginningwithA. :) A bit of fluff I wrote to chase away the uneven-wedding-party-gate blues. Thanks to kenopsia for pointing me in the direction of Dharma & Greg when my usual fav Frasier episodes failed to cheer me up - and for all the encouragement and cheer-reading!! Many thanks to dirigibleplumbing for the beta. <3!
> 
> A few notes: I imagine Tommy and Lovett are younger in this story, perhaps thirtyish or in their late twenties. Their parents are based on the parents from Dharma & Greg, not modeled after any tidbits we know about their actual parents. If you want to watch the episode the story is based on, you can find it on Youtube [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvlnyDPwyh0). This story’s title is, of course, from Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” which is also known as “Teenage Wedding.” 
> 
> The second half of the story is mostly written, so I'll try to post it within the week.
> 
> As always, friends, keep it heck of secret, keep it heck of safe.

**  
Lovett, San Francisco, 1994  
  
**

“Give it another go, honeybunch.” Lovett’s mom squeezed his hand encouragingly, and Lovett leaned back against the scratchy upholstery of the BART seat, taking a deep breath. He tapped his feet in an anxious staccato against the dirty train floor, and squinted his eyes in concentration. Out the window, the AT-AT Walkers of the Oakland port loomed over a maze of shipping containers, colorful with graffiti and stacked like so many Legos, spilling out toward the big ships and the Bay. Lovett fluttered his lashes, making that exciting tableau—speeding by rather quickly now—fade to gray.

“Three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine seven nine three two three eight four six two six four three three eight three two _seven,”_ he chanted. He took another deep breath. The tracks were dipping, the brightness of the shipping yard disappearing as they rattled into the tunnel. But he was safe, wedged here between his parents. His mother gave his hand another squeeze, and he could feel his dad’s gaze on him, fond, proud.

“Go on,” his dad said.

“Nine five zero two eight eight four one nine seven,” Lovett continued, eyes shut now. “One six nine three nine nine three seven…five.” The train was creaking, carrying them a whopping one hundred and thirty five feet beneath the surface of the Bay. Sharks were probably swimming over them right now. Sharks and boats. Lovett’s feet were tapping faster now, and his mind was whirring—numbers and sharks, numbers and sharks. The train tunnel was made using lasers, he knew, which helped all the construction people to dig out the exact right amount of dirt, and that was _cool._ “One zero five eight two zero nine seven four nine four four five nine two,” he went on; the numbers stretched in front of him, like the tunnel, inevitable, and he just had to be calm and move through them. He kept naming them, a wobbly recitation, as his parents murmured encouragement.

Suddenly, the train jolted to a stop, and Lovett’s eyes flew open. People around them were standing up, folding newspapers, brushing the wrinkles out of their coats. They were at the station. He had done it!

“That was phenomenal,” his mom said. “A dozen more digits that time.”

Lovett jumped to his feet. “I wasn’t scared at all,” he gushed, staring up at his dad. “The whole time, the whole tunnel.”

His dad ruffled Lovett’s curls with one hand, then reached to help his mom heft their various tote bags, heavy with containers of couscous salad and hummus, tomato and cheese sandwiches on thick sprouted bread—all the provisions they needed for a full day of practicing juggling and stilt walking in Golden Gate Park. As Lovett’s mom settled the bags on her shoulder, the bright paisley of her mumu swirled around Lovett, obscuring his view of the platform. Then the kaleidoscopic fabric fell away, and Lovett found himself face to face with another boy.

He was just Lovett’s age, maybe, but tall, a gangly body made even _ganglier_ by wide khaki shorts and a boxy, navy blue jacket. Very fancy.  

“Nice flute,” said Lovett, who was teaching himself Cockney rhyming slang.

The boy blinked at him, raising nearly invisible blonde eyebrows.

“That means suit,” Lovett confided, leaning forward. The boy’s jacket didn’t even smell like mothballs. He smelled nice.

“Uh, thanks,” the boy said. He was pale and freckle-faced, with sandy hair and huge eyes fixed on Lovett. For a moment, Lovett worried that he still had poppyseed jam on his face or—horror of horrors—on his new NASA t-shirt, a fresh hand-me-down from one of the older kids at the co-op. He looked down at himself—but no, he was okay—then back up. The tall boy was smiling at him. Oh. Oh! Maybe he wanted to be friends.

“Hi,” Lovett said, to test this theory.

“Hi,” the boy mouthed back. For a moment, he looked delighted, then he glanced away, flushing.

He was holding his parents’ hands too, Lovett realized. At least, they must be his parents. The man was kinda dressed like the Monopoly tycoon, and the mom’s jewelry was small and neat, looked like it didn’t even make noise when she walked. They were trying to board the train while Lovett and his parents were pushing their way onto the platform, and the six of them collided and tangled together, like grown ups who’d drunk too many beers at the contra dance.

“Ouch!”

“Pardon _me.”_

“Watch it!”

Lovett and the boy knocked together. Breathless a moment, they quickly began to laugh.

“Can you come to the park?” Lovett asked, because maybe the boy and his family were just exploring the city today too. Maybe Lovett could teach him how to juggle—or to stilt walk, though he was tall enough already. Lovett would probably make that joke. Already his thoughts were racing ahead to what it might be like to have a friend to play with all day in the sun…

The tall boy’s wide blue eyes lit up, then dimmed as his parents yanked him away, onto the train. “Can’t,” he mouthed. “Sorry.”

Lovett made a sympathetic grimace, and the boy grimaced back.

“This is what I was talking about,” Lovett heard the woman hiss. “Ruffians, probably street performers. _No,_ Tommy, I said don’t touch!” She grabbed the boy’s—Tommy’s—hands away from the pole.  

“Bye Tommy!” Lovett called, as he and his parents trooped up the BART stairs, and the train doors swooshed shut.

Tommy climbed up on the seat Lovett had vacated and pressed his hands to the glass, his forlorn freckle face framed in the train window like a painting. Lovett kept waving, and Tommy watched him until the train disappeared from view.

     

**Tommy, San Francisco, 2014**

   
Tommy Vietor the Fourth, attorney at law, had a fairly ordinary commute to work.

He’d wake up at five and walk the several blocks to his gym, which beckoned him off the sidewalk, bright and bustling, though the whole rest of the city felt still asleep under its blanket of fog. When he was feeling self-indulgent, on the walk back to his apartment he’d stop in at the bakery for a blueberry muffin, a large cup of coffee, and—since he was something of a regular after several years in this neighborhood—a warm smile. He’d sip the coffee the remainder of his walk, forgetting the muffin in his gym bag half the time. The other half of the time, he’d eat the muffin by breaking it into small pieces while sitting on his favorite bench in Lafayette Park. Mostly he’d be distracted scrolling through Twitter, but whenever a post especially pissed him off, he could make himself look up and across the city, or, turning, across the Bay to Marin. When Twitter was too incendiary, he ran out of coffee, or the gusts of wind over the hilltop park were too strong for his suit, peacoat, and scarf, he’d call a Lyft to take him from Pac Heights to his downtown office.

He didn’t usually take the train.

This morning was an exception. Tommy had orders to go all the way out to the Sunset to have their client Mrs. Hu sign some documents related to her living trust. She was in her mid-nineties and had been a client of Keenan, Rhodes, & Pffiefer for a few decades at least; though fit as a fiddle, she infamously despised coming into the city proper for any reason and refused to use a proxy, email, or even the postal service.

“Look,” Dan, one of the senior partners, had told him when he stumbled out of the bathroom in his towel, still dripping, to answer his insistently bleating phone. “Tim was going to do it, but his kid caught a stomach flu. Just go out there bright and early, have a cup of coffee with her, get the documents signed, and you’ll be back in the office by ten for the deposition.”

“Why me?”

“Because Tanya’s only half awake until noon, and old ladies love you. Come on, Mrs. Hu is a very important client.” Tommy could recite the next part in sync with Dan, and did so in his head. “Keenan, Rhodes, & Pffiefer makes exceptions for very important clients.”

“I’m going to leave you for the DA’s office,” Tommy said.

“Ha ha,” Dan replied, as Tommy hung up the phone.

An hour later, Tommy found himself playing courier, heading back out from the office as soon as he’d arrived, documents tucked securely in his leather satchel. Whatever. If the firm wanted to pay him for this, he’d take it. It was such an unusually sunny and mild morning downtown that Tommy wondered if it’d even be pleasant out by the beach, where it was infamously gray and impossible to see your own shadow most days out of the year. Market Street, so often just a giant, unpleasant wind tunnel, felt almost clean, fresh from the weekend’s rain, and there was a pleasant hum to the crowds of commuters and tourists that swirled around him. The flower stand by the Montgomery Station was all daffodils and daisies, sunflowers and black-eyed susans. Tommy smiled.

On a lark, he didn’t call a Lyft; he put his phone away and jogged down the BART station stairs, bought a second cup of coffee and a Muni ticket, and hopped on the L Taraval out toward Ocean Beach. His car was mostly empty as it rumbled through the underground stations, then entirely empty past Forest Hill, where the train emerged onto the street. Tommy tossed his satchel down on the seat next to him and spread his legs, sipped his coffee and studied Taraval’s pastel houses and dumpling restaurants, its old man bars and preschools with brightly decorated windows. As the train passed McCoppin Square, Tommy tugged on the cord, and then stepped off onto a street corner, checking the map on his phone.

His meeting with Mrs. Hu was uneventful. First, he sat on her front steps finishing his coffee while she watered her succulent garden, giving her all the dirt from the office—Tim’s second marriage, Tanya’s promotion, Dan and his wife expecting their first child. Then they went inside, and he held her ancient Pomeranian and drank more coffee while she meticulously reviewed and signed the documents.

“Don’t come back until _you_ have a promotion or a boyfriend to tell me about,” she told him as he left.

“How about a baby? Will that get me in the door?”

“Smartass.” She gave him a hug and then hoisted the Pomeranian, which licked his face, before waving him out the door.

Tommy was a little jittery with caffeine but in a good mood when he caught the inbound L back toward the office. He answered a couple personal emails and texts, humming softly to himself, and started arranging his next day off in his head—tennis with his mother, yes, and helping Tim move apartments, but maybe he could fit in a few hours to read the new Hari Kunzru novel he was excited about or to swim laps at his parents’ club.

It happened at Montgomery Street Station, when Tommy was settling the strap of his bag across his chest, waiting for the train doors to open. He looked up through the glass and felt a jolt of recognition. There was a guy standing on the platform, tapping his foot and frowning at his phone—and, no other way to put it, he took Tommy’s breath away.

It wasn’t just that he was handsome. He _was_ handsome—but more accurately, really fucking cute—in tight maroon jeans and loud purple sneakers, one hand jammed into the pocket of an oversized hoodie, wearing some bulky, old school headphones over short, messy, dark curls. It was more like Tommy _knew_ him, somehow, and not in a cocktail party acquaintance way. Tommy _knew him_ knew him, like he was giving off a frequency that resonated deep in Tommy’s bones, as he tapped his foot and chewed his plush bottom lip. He was kind of short and thick, and he had big brown eyes which a moment ago had been fixed on his phone but which were now staring right at Tommy.

Oh, fuck. Tommy had thought he’d felt transported before. Now he was absolutely dumbstruck. His heart was beating fast as a panic attack, his palms sweating. He felt the overwhelming urge to put his hands on this stranger’s shoulders and, like, just stare into those big, brown eyes—

The train doors opened, and a few other passengers swept past Tommy, but he couldn’t move.

Then the guy stepped right into his space and looked him up and down.

“Hi,” Tommy heard himself say.

“Hey,” the guy said. Tommy could _feel_ the weight of his gaze as he yanked his headphones down, around his neck, with one delicate hand. “Nice flute.”

“Thanks. It’s bespoke.” Tommy’s voice cracked, and he felt the sudden hot rush of blood to his face.

The guy licked his lips. “Be-what?”

“Don’t block the door,” somebody snapped.

“Sorry.” In a daze, Tommy shuffled around the stranger onto the platform, his feet carrying him blindly toward the stairs, while his heart yearned backwards. He craned his head around, looking over his shoulder. The guy was still watching him. He’d taken Tommy’s vacated seat. Their eyes met.

Wait, fuck, what was Tommy doing? He needed to be on that train!

He lunged back across the platform, reaching, but he was too late—the doors snapped shut just as his fingers reached them, and then the train was moving, taking the magical guy away, out of sight.

For one crazy, frantic moment, Tommy thought, _Could I make it to Embarcadero in time if I ran?_

He’d dashed up the stairs, nearly crashing into a pair of backpackers, before his rational brain caught up. No, he couldn’t. He really couldn’t. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Tommy panted, leaning over and putting his hands on his knees. Why hadn’t he asked the guy’s name? Handed him his business card, said ‘call me?’ That would have take all of five seconds.

 _And this,_ he told himself, bitter, _is why you’re always single._

 

“Dude, what happened to you?” Elijah asked, as soon as Tommy slumped into the break room of the office. He’d handed off Mrs. Hu’s forms to Tanya, who informed him that the 10am deposition was postponed—a robotic transaction, Tommy in his head and Tanya still yawning into her thermos of tea—and Tommy was now at something of a loss.

“Did the dog bite you?” Elijah rubbed his forearm resentfully, perhaps feeling ghost pains of the Pomeranian’s past wrath.

“No, she was good. I think dogs just hate you.” Tommy dropped into a chair and put his head in his hands.

“Then what?” There was some rummaging in the fridge, then Elijah sat down across from Tommy and began to eat something noisily. Tommy looked at him through his fingers; he was inhaling garlic noodles from a white takeout box with disposable chopsticks.

“That’s your breakfast?”

“Don’t be so judgmental,” Elijah said, mouth half-full. Tommy kicked at him, and he swallowed. “Leftovers are good for any meal. I don’t want them to go bad.”

“Are they even yours?”

“Travis’s, I think. Don’t tell him.”

Tommy snorted. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll tell everyone what you’re moping about.”

“I haven’t even told you.”

Elijah slurped a noodle, unfazed by this. “But you’re going to. Come on, spill. Unburden yourself. No man is an island, Vietor.”

Dropping his hand from his face, Tommy sat back in his chair. “There was this guy—”

“Ah hah! I knew it was personal, not a work thing this time.” One of Elijah’s chopsticks clattered to the table, and he snatched it back up to point at Tommy. “What’s his name?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know,” Tommy said, miserable.

“What?”

“He was just this guy that I saw on the train. He was getting on, and I was getting off, and we had this—this connection. And then nothing. I just let him get away.”

“Oh, shit. That sucks. But also…a little psycho to be melting down over some random hottie on BART?”

“Muni,” Tommy corrected.

Elijah raised his eyebrows. _“Oo-_ kay.”

“Look, I know it sounds crazy, but there was something about him. Something special. When we made eye contact it was just—woah. That’s never happened to me before.”

“So you think this guy is…the one? Your soulmate?”

Tommy started. “What? No! I don’t believe in soulmates. Obviously.”

Elijah made a circling gesture at him, like, _well, then…_

“I’m just…really bummed out that I’m probably never going to see him again.” Tommy swallowed. “I mean, get the chance to talk to him for real.”

Elijah just looked at him thoughtfully.

“God, on second thought, it’s probably for the best. I’d just muck it up somehow, like every other time.”

“Wow, I’m really learning a lot about you today, Tommy.”

Tommy blinked. What was he _doing?_ He was at work. Elijah was a good work buddy, true, but Tommy had to get a hold of himself.

“Hey! Don’t look like that,” Elijah said. “It’s cool. I’m here for you, bro. Do you want to, like, get out of here for a while? Have a beer? We could take a three martini lunch.”

“No, it’s okay.” Tommy stood up and clapped Elijah on the shoulder. “But thanks for listening to me. I think I’m going to go bury myself in the Stephenson case. Less of a hangover.”

“Eh.” Elijah squinted. “Debatable.”

“Good talk.” Tommy rapped his knuckles on the doorframe before turning toward his office, where he could continue moping in silence.

“I’m here for you, man,” Elijah called after him.

 

Tommy opened the door to his office and chucked his satchel and coat onto the armchair in the corner as he moved toward his desk—a practiced sequence of motions that came to a sudden halt when he realized there was someone sitting on his desk, perched right on top of the Stephenson files.

Not _someone_.

The guy from the train.

 _His guy,_ Tommy’s brain supplied.

Maroon pants and all.

_Holy fuck._

He looked like he was biting back a smile. He was kicking Tommy’s desk with one purple sneaker, a fast _tap tap tap_ that matched the rabbiting of Tommy’s heart, and Tommy had to fight the impulse to bound the few steps between them and spread the guy out over his desk, climb on top of him, and bury his face in the crook of his neck. He was saying something _—huh?—_ and breaking out into a full smile now. “Well, hello! What took you so long?”

“How—?” Tommy tried. “Wha—?”

“How did I find you?”

Tommy nodded.

“Oh, Thomas,” the guy said, holding out his phone. Tommy had to move closer to see the screen, to brush the guy’s fingers with his own as he took the phone, hands shaking. It was an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the Stephenson trial, complete with a photo of Tommy yanking Ky Stephenson through a courthouse steps crowd.

“That’s your client, with the coat over his head, yeah? And there you are, unmistakable. Thomas Vietor the Fourth.”

“Tommy.”

“Tommy,” the guy repeated slowly, kind of rolling around his name in his mouth.

“And you—?”

“Jon Lovett,” he said, reclaiming his phone and then shaking Tommy’s hand. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Tommy Vietor the Fourth.”

“Just Tommy.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Tommy.”

“I’m glad you found me”—Tommy swallowed—“Jon.”

“Lovett,” he replied, wrinkling his nose. “People call me Lovett.”

“Lovett,” Tommy repeated. They were kind of...gazing, grinning at each other. Tommy felt—well, he felt a lot, incredulous joy warring with trepidation. His whole world had narrowed down to this three foot radius, Lovett sitting atop his desk beaming at him, but Tommy was also acutely aware of the fact that they were in the middle of his office. And they were total strangers, which was—significant, he knew. Fuck, he was supposed to _do_ something now, he was sure, but he didn’t know what.

“Alright, you ready to get out of here?” Lovett hopped off the desk, right into Tommy’s personal space, and stared up at him, just like he had on the train platform. There was a gleam to his eyes that looked familiar, like he was a kid issuing Tommy a dare.

“Where are we going?”

“We gotta get to know each other.”

“Yeah?”

“We obviously know each other on a spiritual level, but on a practical level, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” Lovett reached for Tommy’s hand and began pulling him toward the door with an unselfconscious sense of purpose that entirely charmed Tommy, so that he submitted to being tugged along easily, right past his coworkers, right past the entire office. Lovett was surprisingly strong. Out of the corner of his eye, Tommy saw Elijah gawking from the doorway of the break room, probably trying to catch Tommy’s attention. Then from across the room, he heard Travis shout, “Dude, is that my lunch?”

The elevator pinged, and he and Lovett were jumping into it, slamming the close door button, laughing.

“You hungry?” Lovett asked him. His hand was smooth and cool. Inexplicably, Tommy thought of the worry stone he used to cup in his palm to ward off racing thoughts. Cold, bright tiger’s eye, grounding.

“Sure,” he said.

Lovett squeezed his hand. “Great. I know a place.”

 

The _place_ Lovett knew turned out to be AT &T park, open for an afternoon ballgame. When Tommy balked, Lovett waved aside his protests. “I won some season tickets at a bar competition,” he said, leading Tommy to two decently situated upper level seats, far above the game but centered to give a good view of the entire field. “I’m _very_ flexible.”

Tommy choked on his beer, just a little.

“It’s stupid expensive now, I know,” Lovett apologized, giving Tommy a crooked smile. “But I love being outside, up high like this, and there’s nothing like having a beer and a hotdog at a baseball game, somehow?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, smiling back. “I know exactly what you mean.”

The seats in front of them were empty, so Lovett propped his feet up. Tommy looked him over—his compact body, those outrageous purple sneakers—with hopefully not-too-obvious hunger.

“Besides,” Lovett said a while later, once he had finished his hotdog, “baseball games are good venues for my bellicose nature. You can yell anything you want, it’s totally chill. Doesn’t even have to make sense.”

Tommy snorted, and looked up from his phone; it had taken him half an inning, but he had eventually composed a satisfactory text message to Dan about needing the afternoon off.

“Watch.” Lovett stood up and hollered, “THAT ASSIST WAS BANANAS!”

Tommy cracked up; he clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from spitting beer in his lap. “Lovett—” he tried, but he was instantly drowned out as Lovett bellowed, “SMASH THAT KANGAROO! GO!”

On the field, Ishikawa hit a grounder past second base.

Lovett dropped back into his seat, breathless. “See? You try it.”

Tommy was opening his mouth to insist he _couldn’t,_ he would turn beet red, when he heard someone yell, “Hey, idiot.” A man three rows ahead of them had twisted around to glare at Lovett. “Can you shut up?”

Tommy felt the mirth drain from his face, replaced by his usual courtroom calm. “Hey _idiot,”_ he called back. “How ‘bout you mind your own business?”

Well, he _had_ been going for courtroom calm; Boston bro seemed to have shown up instead.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” the man said.

“You are now.” Tommy watched the guy’s eyes narrow, sizing him up.

“Yeah? Then how about you ask your friend nicely to be quiet,” the guy said, spitting out each of these words with derision. “Some of us want to watch the game without homos screaming mental stuff in our ears.”

“Keep talking, asshole.” Tommy leaned forward, feeling predatory. “You want to harass him, you’ll have to deal with me. I’m not from around here. I will fuck you up like a Sox fan, and then do it again in court.”

The guy pressed his lips together and looked away, muttering. Tommy exhaled, turning to Lovett, feeling self-conscious suddenly; Lovett hadn’t asked him to jump to his defense, to speak for him, and maybe he’d be turned off by Tommy going into guard dog mode. But Tommy had seen _red_.

Lovett licked his lips. “I am, uh, a pacifist, and it really shouldn’t be such a turn on to hear you threatening to beat up some—”

“Bozo,” Tommy supplied.

“—bozo. But you’re really hot when you do the Captain America thing.”

“The Captain America thing?”

Lovett pitched his voice low and serious. “I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.”

Tommy laughed.

“I’m serious though. Thanks. It’s nice to have someone, ah, stand up for me.”

Something about the offhand, smooth way Lovett said that, gazing off toward left field, made the back of Tommy’s neck prickle. “Lovett, do people—bother you? Harass you?”

“Nah,” Lovett said. “I mean, I got bullied as a kid, but that’s…” He trailed off, shrugging. “And now, not so much. I whip out the mace very rarely.”

Tommy sat up straighter in his seat, propelled by a growing sense of alarm. “Lovett—”

“I’m just joking” he said. “But hey. Abrupt subject change.” He leaned into Tommy’s space, so their noses were nearly touching. “Do you like blueberry pie?”

Tommy couldn’t help moving the extra inch so their noses did bump together. “Who doesn’t?” he asked, as Lovett audibly caught his breath.

“I dunno. Suckers who are into rhubarb. Vegetables do not belong in pies, Tommy Vietor!” Lovett leaned back and thwacked Tommy’s bicep to emphasize each word of this declaration.

“You’re preaching to the choir.”

“I happen to know the best place to get blueberry pie. Want to go?”

“Okay. I wasn’t expecting such a foodie date. But I’m game.”

“I prefer the term gourmand.” Lovett leapt to his feet.

“Right now?”

“What, you got somewhere else to be?”

Tommy got up and grabbed his coat. He was game too, suddenly, to get away from the fucking guy three rows down, and to do it not on that asshole’s terms but on Lovett’s.

“C’mon,” Lovett said, pulling him toward the aisle by the wrist.

“The Giants _are_ winning though,” Tommy murmured, glancing back over his shoulder to the scoreboard and feeling one momentary pang.

Lovett didn’t pause. “The who?”

Tommy stumbled on a step, and Lovett’s hand tightened, then he let go of Tommy’s wrist to lace their fingers together.

“Nah, I’m just kidding.” He laughed. “I know a thing or two about baseball.”

“Yeah?” Tommy felt weirdly relieved. Lovett was eccentric, and he was _amazing,_ but there _were_ limits, all the same…

Baseball had been the secret delight of Tommy’s summers when he was a kid. His mom had never let him play—there wasn’t enough time, what with tennis lessons, water polo, and piano—but he listened to Giants games on the radio in his room when he could, went to Red Sox games with his grandfather and his uncle when he visited Boston.

One August when Tommy was fourteen, Henry, their cleaning lady’s son who came sometimes to help his mom during school breaks, took him to the park to play pick up games with his large, rowdy group of friends and cousins. Henry had big brown eyes with long lashes and a gap between his front teeth that was very prominent when he was grinning, which was most of the time, and Tommy spent a very sweet week indeed sharing 711 Slurpees and sloppy kisses with him before he sprained his wrist sliding into home base and his mom put an end to his unstructured free time.

Tommy remembered feeling relieved he’d been caught out for the playing baseball with the help part of the whole thing, instead of the kissing boys part of the whole thing—for all of a week, until his mother walked in on them in the pantry, one of the places in the house he’d sworn would be safe from her prying eyes.

“God, Thomas,” his mother had said, lips pursed. “Can’t you keep it in your pants until you’re back at prep school?”

And that had been that.

“I take it you’re pretty into baseball?” Lovett asked, as they made their way to the stairs. “I played on the whiffle ball team in college three years in a row.”

“You went to college?” Tommy blurted, then tensed. He had meant to say, _Your college had a whiffle ball team?_ He was already fumbling for an apology—would he never stop fucking up around people he found attractive?—when Lovett laughed, easy.

“I _know,”_ he exclaimed. “My parents were kind of appalled. You should’ve heard my dad go on about how I was getting suckered by the man, locking myself into indentured servitude in the post-employment economy. But Hampshire let me double major in math and social change, and I got in basically for free, so…” He shrugged. “Did you go?”

“Uh, yeah. A couple times. Law school,” he reminded Lovett.

“Right, duh. You are a super fancy boatshoe. I keep forgetting because you have such good energy.”  

Lovett stopped abruptly and pulled Tommy close, his arms around Tommy’s waist, and Tommy found that Lovett fit against him perfectly. “You’re not like any lawyer I’ve met before,” Lovett said, staring into his eyes.

Tommy felt breathless. “I, uh, do pro bono work for the ACLU sometimes.”

“Of course you do.”

He tipped his head back, and Tommy leaned down to kiss him.

He didn't  _literally_ see fireworks as their lips pressed together, but damn, it was a pretty near thing.

 

“You know, there’s probably decent pie to be had somewhere in the Bay Area.”

Lovett scoffed. “If I wanted _decent_ pie, maybe. I asked if you wanted the best pie.”

The seat belt light dinged. It was two hours later, and they were on a flight to Las Vegas. Tommy shut the overhead bin, where he’d carefully stowed his coat and folded suit jacket alongside their neighbor’s luggage, and he swung himself into the seat next to Lovett. “A little surprised we’re not flying to, like, the Midwest then, actually.”

Lovett slid down in his seat, wriggling like he was settling in. He fixed Tommy with a smirk. “Maybe for our second date.”

 _Our second date._ Lovett wanted to have _a second date._ Tommy thought about this as they sat through the hour and a half flight, talking about their work (Tommy's interest in the law, Lovett's job as a yoga teacher with a dog-walking side hustle). He thought about it as they wove their way through the aisles of slot machines cluttering the McCarren D Terminal to catch a cab to the Strip. He even thought about it as Lovett made jokes about the Thunder Down Under billboards, and as Lovett told a silly story about learning to play poker when he was a kid from his father and the travel writer who used to live in a tent in their backyard: every Tuesday, while his mother was teaching her advanced ceramics class at City College, Lovett had watched the two men gamble the same fifty bucks back and forth, learning to count cards while eating pizza (from the pizza place, _not_ homemade, cheese instead of tofu). Tommy was still thinking about the possibility of going on a second date with Lovett when the cab screeched to a halt a few blocks off the old, grimy tail of the Strip, depositing them in a parking lot in front of a nondescript, 70s bunker of a building emblazoned with the words Pinball Hall of Fame.

Stepping out of the air conditioned car was like stepping into a convection oven. Tommy rolled up his sleeves. “This is a place to get pie?”

Lovett shrugged. “There’s a diner attached to it, on the other side of the building. But let’s go in here first. Trust me, it’s awesome.”

They bought tickets and stepped into the museum. It was, Tommy realized, for all intents and purposes, a giant, highly specific arcade. For several minutes, they wandered through the long, dark rooms, admiring the brightly colored machines, which seemed to be arranged according to decade.

“This one’s cool,” Tommy said, drifting to a fifties model called Regatta, which was covered in illustrations of racing sailboats.

“Of course you like that one!” Lovett laughed. “And it’s next to the Derby machine. It’s the WASP corner. C’mon over here, this one’s two player and has a cool feature.” He walked across the aisle, gesturing for Tommy to join him at game called Fireball with a sort of seventies hellscape motif.

“What? How can they be two player? They’re so...analog.”

Lovett pointed out the different lights and scores on the machine’s backbox, the button you could press to light up the two player option. “So, we take turns. Go on, you first.”

“How did you find this place?” Tommy asked, after a few turns. He meant to watch Lovett tell what would certainly be a good story, but he got sucked into the game, despite himself. He hunched over the machine, cursing as the ball in play ricocheted off a bumper and tipped dangerously close to a drain. Lovett made an amused noise, leaning on the adjacent machine, at Tommy’s elbow.

“We lived in Vegas for about a year while my dad was fixing the van,” Lovett said finally. “I was eleven, I think, so this place was right up my alley.”

“Fixing the van?” Tommy failed to save the ball, and he stepped out of the way for Lovett to take his place.

“Yeah, we spent pretty much every summer driving around to different parts of the country so my parents could visit their friends and, ah”—he made what seemed to be a tricky save, biting his lip—“Larry could play his banjo at dive bars for, like, old people.”

“Larry?”

“My dad.”

“Oh.”

“It was alright. I saw a lot of cool stuff. We even drove down to Central America once.” Lovett stepped back from the game, as the machine began to emit a high pitched trill. “That’s the biri-biri sound.” He winked at Tommy. “It means I totally kicked your ass.”

Tommy ran a hand down Lovett’s arm. “Then how about I stand you some pie and coffee? I want to hear more about this itinerant childhood of yours.”

They wandered to the back room, then slipped into the adjacent diner, which looked like a truck stop Denny’s with a 1950s kitsch makeover. The host glanced up from his phone to indicate that they could take their pick of the empty tables. Instead of sitting across from Tommy, Lovett slid into the booth next to him. He tossed the menus aside and ordered two coffees, two slices of blueberry pie on the waitress’s first pass by the table. Then he launched into a colorful story about the Southwest trip that had landed him in Vegas until their order arrived.

The pie _was_ delicious, with a flaky crust and a tangy-sweet filling that made Tommy close his eyes after the first bite. They ate in silence for a while, a respect he usually only accorded perfect ramen. Their knees were touching under the table. It was nice. So nice. Tommy’s chest ached. God, he had to say _something,_ before he lost his nerve.

He cleared his throat. “What you said before…the thing about us having a second date…”

“Yeah?” Lovett twisted on the bench, pulling one leg up so they could comfortably face each other. “Next Thursday, the Midwest. How ‘bout that gay suburb outside of Detroit? I’m holding you to it.”

Tommy laughed. “But seriously, I really want to go on another date with you. I just—”

“What?”

“I always fuck up dating, is all. Anytime I meet someone I—like, it’s the same thing all over again.”

“So what do you usually do?”

Tommy sighed. “Okay. So, we start dating, and everything goes pretty well at first. But _then_ I start calling you too much, and you start screening your calls. I show up at your apartment unexpectedly with way too many flowers, but it turns out you’re allergic, and the gesture’s just really desperate, not cute. You’re all like, oh Tommy, you’re a really good guy, but I’m actually not looking for something serious right now, which is nice-speak for leave me alone you clingy weirdo. And then we break up.”

“Yikes. Let’s not do that.”

“Yeah, well.” Tommy put down his fork and shoved his plate away, feeling deflated, like a little of the lovely buoyancy of this manic date was escaping, soon to be gone altogether. “I wish we could just—skip the dating part. Fast forward to some part where we’ve figured out we both like each other and can just…be together. I promise you I’d be really good at that.”

Lovett looked at him for a long moment, then put down his fork too. “Okay,” he said, decisively.

“Okay?”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

“Alright.” Tommy grinned at him. “What, are we making a blood pact or something?”

“Cute. Fluid bonding is on the table, but I’m thinking let’s make it official first.” He reached over and took Tommy’s hands. “Tommy Vietor, will you marry me?”

Tommy nearly choked on his own saliva. “Holy fuck,” he said. “Really? You’re serious?”

“Shut up! Of course I’m serious. We’re meant to be.”

“But Lovett, there’d still be, you know, dates—like until the, uh, wedding.”

“You goofball. I mean, let’s get married today, now. We’re in Vegas! What else are we supposed to do here?” He lowered his voice, looked at Tommy through his dark lashes. “Come on, baby, don’t you want to lock this down?”

The thing was—yes. Just yes. Tommy’s throat felt dry, and his hands drifted, like of their own accord, to Lovett’s hips and thick waist, pulling him across the bench seat of their booth until he was snug against Tommy. “You have no idea,” he murmured against Lovett’s mouth, which dropped open. His eyelashes fluttered, and Tommy placed his hand carefully at Lovett’s lower back before he kissed him.

“Come on, dudes,” the guy from the host stand said, after a moment, rapping his clipboard on the formica table. “This is basically a family restaurant. It’s, like, adjacent to an arcade. You know, for children? Can you keep it PG?”

“We need a—a wedding chapel,” Tommy said, breaking away from Lovett.

“Oh, word, congrats,” the guy said, sighing. “Down The Strip, just a block on the left,” he recited, like he’d given this direction many times before. “Or if you keep going another two blocks, there’s another one that has an Elvis.”

“Excellent,” Lovett said, tossing down a twenty for tip and pulling Tommy toward the door.

 

In an astonishingly short amount of time, Tommy and Lovett were stumbling out of the Elvis wedding chapel, lawfully wedded husbands.

“Oh my God, put me down,” Lovett yelped, wrapping an arm around Tommy's neck. “You don’t have to carry me out of the chapel! You’re supposed to carry me into our room.”

Tommy never skipped arm day, but it wasn’t like he was a bodybuilder; luckily, the Sahara Hotel and Casino was only across the street.

Despite housing both a tax accountant _and_ a UFO enthusiast convention, the Sahara had some free rooms. With Lovett practically vibrating by his side, equal parts mischief and excitement, Tommy hesitated only a moment before he slammed down his card for a classic honeymoon suite. It was worth it, putting up with the fuchsia, glittering schlock of the room, all ambiance rather than function, to see his face twist in delight. “Oh  my God,” he breathed, immediately collapsing on the pink satin coverlet of the heart shaped bed. “Does it vibrate? Tell me there’s somewhere I can stick a quarter to get the Magic Fingers going.”

“I’ll show you magic fingers.”

“Oh my God, you’re such a dork.”

Tommy kicked off his shoes and climbed on top of Lovett, pushing a hand under his shirt to rest on his stomach. He wanted to say something funny, to keep Lovett like this, glowing, rumbling with laughter, but his words were slipping away. For the first time since their serendipitous meeting, they were alone, behind a locked door, and Lovett was _his_ to touch and hold and explore. It was overwhelming.

“Help, I’ve married a huge dork who’s gonna smother me with dad humor.” Lovett tipped back his head, exposing his throat for Tommy to kiss.

“I can’t keep up with you,” Tommy said against Lovett’s neck. “I can’t think straight, finally getting my hands on you, finally being alone with you like this.”

“You better get used to it,” Lovett said, and he pulled Tommy up to press their lips together.

As they began shedding clothing, Tommy unbuckled his watch and attempted to toss it onto the nightstand. His hand hit some kind of button that was next to the lamp, and the room’s normal incandescent lighting flickered off, replaced by a dim pink glow.

“Oh, wow,” Lovett said, lifting his head to look around the small room. “Is it more horror movie or naughty, you think?”

“Definitely naughty.”

“I don’t know, it’s fifty-fifty at least. Feels like I’m about to be possessed by the ghost of Doris Day.”

“I’ll be the Rock Hudson to your Doris Day,” Tommy said.

“You _are_ gay,” Lovett said, flopping back onto the bed with a happy sigh. “I’m so freaking lucky.”

“Well, bi,” Tommy said, kissing him again. “But yeah, we’re the luckiest. I still can’t believe I found you.”

“— _I_ found _you,_ Tommy Vietor—”

“Can’t believe we found each other,” he amended. They lay nose to nose, both breathing heavily but touching each other slowly. “Jonathan Ira Freedom Lovett,” Tommy said, because he wanted to, because it was delightful to say his husband’s name.

“Thomas Vietor the Fourth,” Lovett whispered, voice kind of reverent, running his fingers along the curve of Tommy’s ear.

“We’re _married.”_

“We are.”

Tommy rubbed their noses together. Lovett sighed, then parted his lips for Tommy to taste him, to bite his lower lip. Someday, this would be the part of the conversation where Tommy said _I love you;_ for now, he contented himself with holding Lovett close.

 

♥︎ 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished this thing! Finally! Please enjoy some gentle sit-com frippery, all ye who are dispirited by the discourse or struggling to breathe this toxic California air. <3
> 
> Thanks again to kenopsia and beginningwitha for brain-twinning with me on this (and way too many other tommyjon AUs in various states of completion!!) and for all the encouragement along the way. As always, epic thanks to dirigibleplumbing for the super helpful beta feedback.

In the small hours of the morning, Tommy reclined against the tufted headboard of their heart-shaped bed, propped up by a mountain of frilly sham pillows. Lovett was sleeping in his arms. He was drooling a little, his cheek pressed against Tommy’s chest so that every exhale gusted across Tommy’s nipple in a devilishly ticklish way, and he was actually pretty heavy. Tommy wouldn’t have moved him for the world. Very carefully, he combed his fingers through Lovett’s disheveled curls, wondering if he ever grew them out and what that would look like.

In between rounds two and three of, uh, consummation—as Lovett had gleefully called what had been hands down the best sex of Tommy’s life—Tommy had staggered to the sink to get them more water, then to the vending machine down the hall to procure Lovett a Diet Coke. Before he climbed back into bed, he’d tugged open the thick velvet curtains covering the far wall so they could look out over the neon sprawl of the city. 

“S’beautiful,” Lovett had murmured, already too drowsy to do more than take a couple sips of his Diet Coke and push it back at Tommy to set aside. 

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d like it,” Tommy mused. “Ten dollar minimums and bachelor parties, all the glitz.” 

“I don’t love that part. But, like, old Vegas and weird Vegas. White tigers, strip malls of bizarre shit like pinball museums and Elvis wedding chapels. Sparkling lounges where Ella Fitzgerald sang in the fifties. The desert stretching on forever.” He yawned. “I don’t know. We should go to Palm Springs sometime. Maybe it’ll be more our style.”

“Honeymoon?”

Lovett snorted. “Weekend getaway. We can do better for our honeymoon.”

“Like what?”

“Dunno, don’t you want to, like, see the northern lights or swim in the Mediterranean or something?”

Tommy let out a thoughtful hmm, considering. With Lovett, he did, yes.

“Maybe we could rent a yacht. Proper boatshoe honeymoon.” He shifted on Tommy’s chest. “How is it? Rent a yacht? Charter a yacht? I don’t know these things. You’re gonna have to teach me.”

Now, with Lovett snoring on his chest, the faintest blush of sunlight cresting the far mountains and mingling with the Strip’s neon blur, Tommy ran his palm down Lovett’s spine, letting himself fully feel the thrill that had been buzzing under his skin since they first met. A honeymoon. Traveling with Lovett. A life of getting dragged by the wrist into adventure after adventure. Such a sharp left turn in his careful life plan, something terrifyingly new, different. Beneath a wonderful layer of skin-tingling, happy exhaustion, Tommy was excited. 

No stranger to insomnia, he figured he was too in his thoughts to sleep; that, and Lovett was a particularly active sleeper, twitching and turning and making small dream sounds that kept startling Tommy out of his reverie. After a while though, Lovett rumbling against him like an over-large cat lulled him from drowsiness into slumber. He didn’t wake up until mid-morning sun hit him in the face and Lovett elbowed him in the ribs, rolling over. 

“Why are you awake?” Tommy asked. It felt—not early, but _too early._

Lovett groaned. “Wasn’t.” 

Tommy turned his head to look at Lovett; he was lying on his stomach, his cheek pillow-creased and his hair a mess. 

“Pie restaurant is open,” Lovett mumbled. “Want to—pie?”

“What, not up for round four?” Tommy said, propping himself up on one elbow to admire Lovett in his tetchy, sleep-tousled glory. 

He promptly dragged a pillow over his head. “Caffeine me, Vietor.”

Tommy pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades, grinning, and untangled himself from the sheets. He stumbled to the shower. The reflection he passed on the way was equally a mess—puffy eyes, epic bedhead, chest poxed with love bites—but he was a mess with a swagger in his step. He stood smiling to himself, running through the events of the night before in his head, holding one hand under the shower spray as it warmed. The water pressure was actually pretty good. In the shower, Tommy let himself get lost for a while, until he heard his phone ring from the other room. Oh shit, work. He needed to call out again.

“Would you get that?” he called. “If it’s my office? Tell them I’ll call them right back—”

“Tommy’s pants,” he heard, over the rush of the water, and had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Jesus, Lovett. “He’s not in them right now.” 

Tommy ducked his head under the spray, so it ran over his ears and blocked out the rest of the conversation. Dan was maybe going to kill him. 

When he emerged, towel-dried and wrapped, to try to smooth out his suit, Lovett tossed his briefs at his head. He seemed much more awake. “Hurry up! We’ve got to be at your mother’s house by two for lunch.” 

_“What?”_

“Oh shit, you are _out_ to them, right?”

“Well…yeah.”

Lovett flopped back on the satin sheets. “That’s a relief. Would you believe I’ve sat there holding the hands of three different boyfriends while they came out? You can get paid to do that in Japan. I saw it on Gaycation.” 

“Uh,” Tommy said. “It’s more that my parents are…intense.” 

“Runs in the family,” Lovett said, nudging him with his foot. 

Tommy grabbed his foot and rubbed Lovett’s ankle. “Not quite what I mean, but, um, I guess you’ll see. That was really them on the phone? Inviting us to lunch?”

“Yup.”

“You talked to my mom on the phone.”

“Yes?”

Lovett on the phone with his mom. Well. It wasn’t quite getting caught with his pants down in the pantry. Tommy would take it. “Did you tell them that we’re…”

“In Vegas? Nope. I figured we could make it back in time.” Lovett craned his head toward the nightstand, which actually did not have a clock. “Maybe.”

“What about that we’re…?” Tommy held up his left hand and wiggled his fingers. 

“Figured you might want that to be a surprise.”

“Right. Good. Good thinking.” Tommy nodded. Fuck, he was maybe too sleep deprived to process the idea of introducing Lovett to his parents right now, but also, Lovett was nudging him with his foot again, staring with undisguised interest at Tommy’s towel, so maybe Tommy could put off going into panic-mode until later. He let the towel drop to the ground and climbed up on top of Lovett, whose squawking about how Tommy’s wet hair was dripping all over him was belied by the way his hands fastened tightly around Tommy’s biceps.

Yeah, okay, he’d have plenty of time to figure it out later.

 

Their flight back to San Francisco was uneventful—Tommy unable to sleep but happy to have Lovett knock out on his shoulder—and once they’d climbed in a cab, Lovett asked, “Do you mind if we swing by my place so I can change?”

Tommy felt a zing of relief. “And then mine. My apartment’s not so far from their house. I need to get out of this crumpled suit.”

“You look fairly debauched,” Lovett agreed, staring at him with appreciation. 

They would freshen up, would look presentable; they would sit down to an unexceptional lunch, talk about golf and his mother’s latest charity. Lovett would be charming. His parents would be charmed, wouldn’t they? It wouldn’t be…bad.

He would ease them into the idea of he and Lovett being married.

There was a sinking, swooping weight in his stomach, and his breathing was becoming shallow. _You have to stop thinking about it,_ he told himself. He really needed to get it together, so he could find that groove that worked best with his parents, the result of his particular upbringing and trial and error across his twenties. Smile, earnestly try his best, keep his mouth shut, do what they asked, present them with the facts of his life, his choices, without fanfare— _this is what is_. His apartment, his job, each of his relationships, such as they were. For the most part, he made good choices, let his parents’ approbation, anxieties, and advice wash over him without too much fuss, and…kept on keeping on. 

This thing with Lovett…his _husband._ They’d be surprised, of course, but it would be _fine._

Of course, telling himself this didn’t stop him from thinking through scenario after awful scenario as the city zoomed by out the window.

“Earth to Tommy,” Lovett said. “This is me.” 

Lovett was unbuckling his seatbelt and sliding out of the car. Tommy followed, looking around with a frown. “This is where you live?”

“You like?” 

“Mmm,” Tommy hummed, staring. He had been expecting—what exactly?—some apartment in the Outer Mission? A shared warehouse in SOMA? This was—well, one of the funkiest Lower Haight hippie houses Tommy had ever seen. It was tall and gabled, a classic Victorian done up in rosy pink and white trim that was starting to peel with age. A wooden fence entirely painted with a mural of garden flowers wrapped around an actual garden taken over by plants both native and carefully cultivated, poppies and peonies, purple sage and beds of tulips. Ceramic pots of succulents and jade plants were everywhere too, accompanied by classic pointy-hatted garden gnomes and stranger sculptures—lumpy ceramic figures, some bestial, like fairytale monsters, some clearly meant to be the naked female form. The entryway of the house, where there might have once been steps or a porch, was taken over by a glass conservatory, hot house plants pressed up against its dirty glass panels. 

“Come on,” Lovett said. “I usually go around the back. Less chance of running into my mom doing her topless gardening thing.” 

_“What?”_

“I know, right? Me, I’d be worried about getting a weird rash. But, parents, you know.” Lovett shrugged. “Can’t tell them anything.” 

“You live with your parents?” Tommy asked, startled. _Don’t,_ he told himself, pushing back at the judgment that threatened to rush in. 

“It’s a duplex,” Lovett replied, easily, not seeming to pick up on Tommy’s unease. He had been digging in his sweatshirt pockets, and he pulled out a key with triumph. “Favs and I live in the upstairs apartment.” 

“Who’s Favs?”

“My housemate. I mean, we’re friends too. We do a podcast together.” 

They walked down a narrow alley, and then Lovett unlocked a door in the tall wooden gate and swung it open, holding it for Tommy. No sooner had Tommy stepped in the yard, then he was mobbed by two barking curly haired dogs, one tawny, one russet brown.

“Down, girls!” Lovett laughed, securing the gate and then dropping to his knees to sink his hands into their fur. “This is my dog Pundit, and this is Pundit’s dog Lucca,” he told Tommy. 

“Your dog has her own dog?”

“Yeah, Lucca was her bat mitzvah present.”

“Pundit is—I mean, you’re Jewish?” 

“Culturally, yeah. My parents don’t believe in organized religion, but we got to keep some of the fun stuff—like building the sukkah back here”—he gestured around the yard, which was overgrown like the front yard around its edges but had a stretch of clear grass, perhaps for the dogs—“Anyway, like most parents, I try to give my kids what I never had.” He ruffled Pundit’s fur. “I got Pundit from one of my clients, ‘cause she was going into a nursing home and had to give her up.”

“Oh,” Tommy said. “That’s…sad.”

“Yeah, it is sad, but don’t worry, we still see her every Tuesday for game night. You’ll meet her. She’s awesome. She’s like my fifth grandmother.”

“You have four grandmothers?”

Lovett paused, head tilted like he was counting. “Yeah. My Grandma, my Bubbe, Grandma Lulu, and Grandma Patrice. Well, I call Patrice and Lulu my grandmothers. We’re not really related, but they’ve been my Grandma’s girlfriends for as long as I’ve been alive, so.” Lovett beamed at Tommy. “They’re going to love you.”

“Uh—why? I mean, what makes you say that?”

“Shut up! Because you’re freaking hot, that’s why. And because I—I’m totally into you, and we’re married. And stuff.”

Tommy knelt next to Lovett and kissed him. _And stuff._ His heart thudded, quick and tender, with the possibilities…God, he and Lovett were _married_. They were going to make a life together, and Tommy could be all in without worrying about coming on too strong, caring too much, fucking it up. Except…

Tommy leaned back, frowning. “Are you—is this—going to be one of those open marriages? Does it, uh, run in the family?”

“Um, I actually don’t know? It hasn’t really come up for me before. Like I so rarely lock down one guy, let alone two.” Lovett looked at him thoughtfully. “Right now I kind of want to wrap myself around you at all times, like an octopus, but if it’d make you happy—”

“No,” Tommy said quickly. “That’s not what I—”

“Or if you fall head over heels for Favs. He’s really hot. It happens a lot.”

Tommy was opening his mouth to…maybe swear eternal devotion, he wasn’t sure, but Lovett barreled on. He seemed to be working himself into what Tommy had provisionally dubbed full rant mode. 

“I don’t mind sharing with him. It’s cool, as long as the two of you don’t run off together and leave me alone. I can’t do one of those solo podcasts. I have the voice for it, I could totally do all of the accents, but I’m way better when there’s banter, you know?” Lovett’s face darkened for a moment, then brightened. “Look at us, already sharing our deepest darkest fears. Isn’t it amazing that we can be so open with each other?”

“Lovett,” Tommy said soothingly. “Can we maybe uh focus on the two of us for now? Figuring us out? I’d really like that.”

Lovett beamed at him the way he had when Tommy slid the ring on his finger—that thousand watt, uninhibited, toothy grin that Tommy was already _crazy_ for—like Tommy had just given him the most fantastic present. “You got it, baby,” he said. 

Of course, Tommy had to roll him to the grass and pin him there for several moments, until the dogs snuffling at their ears became too distracting and Tommy remembered they were on a deadline. 

“Favs really _is_ hot though,” Lovett said over his shoulder, as they climbed the back stairs. His lips were wet, well-kissed, and there was mud on his jeans. “I’m just warning you now. You might want to prepare yourself. Gird your loins.”

“Lovett, I really think I can only handle one whirlwind romance at once…”

Lovett unlocked the door and threw it open, gesturing for Tommy to step in before him.

As Tommy looked around the room, someone, apparently Favs, called out, “Hey buddy!”

“Jonathan,” Lovett called, singsong. “There’s someone I want you to meet!”

“Wait, I thought Jonathan was _your_ name,” Tommy said, whirling to Lovett. 

“We’re both Jonathan,” the guy—Favs—said, waving his hand, as if this was an unimportant detail. 

“That’s actually how we met.”

“Alphabetical order?” Tommy hazarded.

“Nah, our homeschool group didn’t really believe in that kind of structure.”  

Favs shook his head, laughing. “He’s trolling you. We weren’t homeschooled together. God, Jon, not everything’s about your hippy-dippy past.”

Lovett made a face at him.

“We met during college at this music festival near Big Sur,” Favs told Tommy. “I was attending to report on the labor practices and the environmental impact of the festival—”

“Shut up! _I_ was attending to report on the labor practices and the environmental impact of the festival. You were, like, dating Animal Collective.” 

Favs shook his head again, bemused, but continued. “We both dropped acid but accidentally got _way_ higher than we’d intended—”

“—and when we ran into each other, this crazy thing happened where we were, like, one hundred percent convinced that we were the same person.” 

“Like separated at birth.”

“One soul split into two bodies,” Lovett waxed poetic, making jazz hands. 

“It wore off after a few hours, and it turned out we have pretty much nothing in common.”

“But we became friends—”

“—and now we make a podcast together!” 

Tommy looked between them. “And finish each other’s sentences, apparently.” 

“Aw, honey, don’t be jealous.” Lovett leaned against Tommy and patted his bicep; despite the theatricality of the gesture, Tommy found himself soothed. 

“So you’re dating?” Favs asked, wagging a finger between Lovett and Tommy.

“Stop sidetracking me!” Lovett accused. “You’ve ruined our dramatic entrance.”

“Do-over?” Favs suggested.

Lovett ushered Tommy back out onto the landing, then threw open the door again. Tommy winced as it slammed into the plaster of the wall, but Lovett didn’t seem to care. “Favs, guess what?” he bellowed.

Favs, who appeared to have resettled himself on the couch with a magazine, jumped to his feet and threw out his arms. “What?” he yelled back. 

“I got married! This is my husband, Tommy.”

Tommy watched Favs’s—admittedly—handsome face transform from performative excitement to actual joy. “Oh, wow. Dude. Congratulations!” He engulfed Lovett in a hug and lifted him off the ground. When he let Lovett go, he turned to Tommy. Tommy reached out for a handshake, but Favs used his grip on his hand to yank him close and give him a couple thudding bro-slaps on the back. “If you cause my friend any emotional pain,” he whispered, “I’ll punish you in ways you can’t even imagine.”

Tommy winced. Thought about protesting his good intentions, settled for a small nod. He would prove himself, to Lovett’s friends and family. To his own. 

Lovett cleared his throat behind them, and Favs released Tommy. “If you’re done posturing…” he said, grumbling something that sounded like _and they say chivalry is dead._ “You don’t have to vet him,” he told Favs, laying a hand on his arm. “I already vetted him. Already took the leap.” 

“Yeah, well, if he’s a dick to you, you’re leaping back out,” Favs rumbled, the boyish look of fondness he was leveling at Lovett at odds with the threat. 

“Fine,” Lovett said, as if this was a concession. “But you’re not allowed to run off with him to San Di—fucking—ego, okay? Without texting me first.” Lovett shook his finger at Favs, who rolled his eyes. 

“God, I do that _one_ time…” 

Tommy felt himself blushing deeply. “Guys, no one is going to San Diego. And I’m not going to be a dick to you, Lovett.” 

This declaration rang out loudly in the room. Favs, Lovett, and the dogs watched him for a moment. 

“So, uh, what’s your podcast about?” Tommy asked.

“SPACE!” Lovett said. “It’s an audio drama set in space!”

“What, really?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty popular,” Favs said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’re going into our third season this fall.” 

“What do you do when you’re not working on the podcast?” Tommy asked Favs carefully.

“Oh, Favs reports on local politics,” Lovett answered. “I do too, actually.”

“We share an office in our ever shrinking newsroom,” Favs said.

“I thought you were a yoga teacher,” Tommy said. “And, uh, a dog walker…?”

“Lovett is a man of many gigs.”

“A man of mysteries,” Tommy said, eyebrows raised. 

“Hey, we just met!” Lovett protested. “Gotta keep the mystery alive for _at least_ forty eight hours, that’s what I always say.” 

“How do you have the time to work, uh, three jobs? I mean—do you—” Tommy stumbled, unsure of what he was trying to ask, exactly. “That must take up a lot of your time.”

“Oh, you’ve found a clingy one,” Favs said. “He’s worried about getting a piece of you, Lo.”

“I’m not!” He’d been concerned before, but he was positive he was flushing bright red now. “I work a lot too. I’m, uh, always working. I—”

Lovett wrapped an arm around Tommy’s waist, making a shushing sound, and Tommy bit his lip to shut himself up. Favs was laughing at him. He _was_ pretty cute, the gap between his front teeth reminding Tommy of Henry, his baseball-playing summer crush, with a sudden pang. Tommy kind of wanted to punch Favs, but maybe as an invitation to some playful bro wrestling and not as a violent gesture, actually.

“You guys hanging out?” Favs asked. “Or are you gonna go—?” He nodded toward what must be Lovett’s bedroom.

“Nah, we boned it out pretty thoroughly last night,” Lovett said easily. “And this morning.”

“Lovett!” Tommy hissed. He was totally beet red now. It was a lost cause. God.

“We’re gonna go have lunch with Tommy’s folks. Meeting the in laws!”

“Nice!” Favs said. Completely un-ironically, as far as Tommy could tell. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then. Gonna head into the office. That Prop J piece won’t write itself.” 

Lovett released Tommy to clamp his hands over his ears. “Don’t talk shop to me,” he said. “I’m honeymooning. Pre-honeymooning.” 

“I’ll email you the draft,” Favs replied, undeterred. He grabbed a backpack from the foot of the couch and shoved a laptop into it, slung it over his shoulder. “Don’t fuck up!” he called back to Tommy on his way out the door. The rest of his farewell was swallowed by the sound of the door slamming shut, but Tommy thought it might have been something like _or I’ll hurt you!_

“Don’t listen to him. He’s just messing around,” Lovett told Tommy. Then he went into his room to change.

Left alone, Tommy was able to look around the room and what he could see of the apartment—which, until now, had been but a colorful background to the loud exchange between Lovett and Favs. Now that he could really take it in, well—what had he expected?—the place was totally funky. It looked like the inside of a ship—if the ship was inhabited by nerds. That was the best way Tommy could describe it. First off, the wide living room was flooded with warm light and unexpected prisms; the room’s many windows were hung with multi-colored glass baubles casting a rainbow of colors everywhere, across the bright blonde wood. On the coffee table, next to the magazine Favs had tossed aside, a stack of board games towered, threatening to topple and crush an army of miniatures, which appeared to be leading a rush off the table and onto the rug, somehow undisturbed by the dogs. There were oversized bean bags, game consoles and controllers, a large screen mounted on the wall. A record player and bins of records. Art everywhere—paintings and sketches, photographs and old maps. Tommy picked his way over the miniatures, game controllers, houseplants, and dog toys to peer through a doorway into the kitchen. It was painted bright yellow, the sink overflowing with dishes, the floor space diminished by a table tucked into a nook, its surface marked by coffee rings and cluttered with candles and spider plants. Instead of regular wooden chairs, two Victorian-style arm chairs, their velvet worn and patched, were pushed up to the table. The fridge, at least, was fairly typical, ornamented with the usual constellation of Save the Dates, celebratory event photographs, and quirky magnets.

The strangest feature of the apartment was very strange indeed: when Tommy looked up toward the high ceilings, there was throughout the apartment a sort of second level that looked like structurally unsound playground equipment modeled off a pirate ship—ramps up from the floor, tunnels, boxes with openings cut into different shapes, little bridges.

“Lovett, what’s all this?” he called. 

“Oh, it’s for the dogs,” Lovett shouted back, instantly understanding Tommy’s meaning. 

“What?” Tommy walked over to the doorway to Lovett’s room. He still couldn’t see Lovett, who seemed to have disappeared into a walk in closet—if the rustling and cursing coming from the closet door were any indication—but he could hear him better as he said, “Yeah, Favs and I drank a bunch of Mai Tais one night and realized it was profoundly unfair that cats get these cool play structures but dogs don’t. So we built all that.”

“Do, uh, do they like it?”

“No, not really. We could never get them to try it out. Turns out they like being on the ground. But it looks pretty cool, yeah? And it’d be a pain in the ass to tear down.”

Tommy thought it must be a bigger pain in the ass to dust, but he bit his lip. 

Lovett’s bedroom was pretty much a giant bed, just the most massive bed—could it even be a king?—with the fluffiest and most inviting comforter Tommy had ever seen, perfectly white like a cumulous cloud, and a ton of pillows in somber canvas, stripes and grays and blues. Tommy wanted to dive into the pillows and just roll around on the whole thing. God, was Lovett like…a witch, or something? What kind of person casually had a bed that big?

Tommy flinched as Lovett chucked a sneaker out of the closet. 

If he flopped down on that bed, there was _no way_ he’d make it up to lunch or dinner either. Regretfully, he retreated back to the living room, sat gingerly on the couch and began to flip through Favs’s magazine, unseeing, his mind whirring ahead yet again to introducing Lovett to his parents.

“Tommy! Tommy?” Lovett yelled. “What color jeans do WASPs find the most respectable?”

“Uh, khaki?”

Lovett laughed like Tommy had made a really good joke.

Tommy pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and groaned.

 

By the time Lovett came out of his room, grinning, and tackled Tommy to the couch, Tommy had come up with a plan. Sort of. He and Lovett just needed to get on the same page, re: his parents, which would be difficult, given Lovett’s effusive personality and the fact that he he hadn’t met them yet—but once he did meet them, he would understand. Tommy’s parents had a dampening effect on effusion. They were like humidifiers. Dementors. Lovett would see. So Tommy would get Lovett to strategize with him, and Lovett would appreciate the strategy in due time.

“How do I look?” Lovett asked, pulling back from burying his face in Tommy’s neck. 

“Hot,” Tommy admitted, running his hands over Lovett’s back. He looked good. He’d put on surprisingly conservative dark jeans and classic black and white Sambas, was wearing a fitted t-shirt with leaves and vines screen printed around the sleeves and collar. God, he was so freaking cute, which was, like, pretty much an awareness that lived in Tommy’s body now, even as the thought ricocheted around his head, his hands on Lovett’s wonderful thick waist and his face pressed against his curls. 

“Sweetheart, do you own a shirt with a collar?” Tommy heard himself ask. 

Lovett frowned. “Yeah, but it’s…lunch.” 

“I know.” He smiled, tried to right himself, his tone. “Humor me? I love this shirt.” He touched a tangled vine that swooped over Lovett’s chest. “If you put on something over it, maybe we could—you could take it off for me later.”  

“Okay,” Lovett said against Tommy’s mouth.

A few minutes later, he pulled away to dig in his closet again. Tommy stood up, taking some deep breaths, and went to stand by the door. He had to focus, if they were ever going to leave. Fuck, if they could just forget the whole thing, spend the day here in bed. Lovett’s giant bed. God, he _was_ , like, a witch or something, with a bed like that. Just…magic. Maybe he could tell his mother he’d come down with strep throat or something. The flu. But no. Tommy sighed. His mother had a preternatural sense when it came to Tommy. She would surely know that something was up, and then she would either ferret out the truth and be furious or fail to figure it out and be furious with anticipation. The best thing Tommy could do was face the dragon head on with shield and sword. Take Lovett there, let the ‘rents look at him over their salmon and vodka tonics for an hour, and then—well, Tommy would tell them the news on the way out the door, sweep Lovett away from the worst of it. 

“Alright, I’m ready!” Lovett sailed out of his room and fished around on the coffee table amongst the books and papers for his keys. He was wearing a—wow—he was wearing a teal blue vintage Western style shirt with those pearl snap buttons. It looked really good on him, was the thing. But. God, his mother was going to freak.

“You ready?” Lovett was staring at him. 

“Yup,” Tommy said, suppressing the urge to ask if Lovett had a sweater or a blazer. He had a suspicion that line of inquiry would only make things worse, a vivid flash of Lovett wearing some bedazzled coat to rival the wedding chapel Elvis or a knit pullover featuring Yoda’s face. “Let’s go,” he said. “You look great.”

Lovett beamed at him. “This is going to be so fun,” he said.

 

Tommy took one look at his parents and knew, one hundred percent _knew,_ not a single doubt, that the lunch would not be even the tiniest bit fun. Well, fuck. Good thing Tommy had been brought up to handle situations like this with all the stoic fortitude of a Calvinist subsistence farming in cold, rocky soil. He gripped Lovett’s arm and steered him past their frosty reception into the parlor. Pressed a hastily made vodka tonic into Lovett’s hands. Sat next to him on the love seat, close enough that their knees pressed together, across from his father, angled so that he could shield Lovett from the bluntness of his mother’s assessing glare. Survival mode.

They made it on pleasantries and the usual criticisms of Tommy’s appearance—he looked tired, was he taking care of himself, was he staying late at the office every night still—into the dining room, but just barely. 

His father had just reached for the bread when his mother said, “So, Thomas, you’ve been awfully sly.”

Tommy made a non-committal sound, took a long sip of his drink. They had graduated from vodka tonics to white wine upon entering the dining room. 

His mother turned to Lovett. “Did you and Thomas meet at work, Jonathan? He has a bad habit of dating other lawyers.”

“I’m not a lawyer. It was more of a Craigslist missed connections sort of thing. Saw each other on the train, made significant eye contact”—Lovett raised his eyebrows —“except instead of posting an ad, I just Google stalked him to his place of employment.” He laughed.

There was a slight pause before his mother answered, “Really? And, ah, what do you do? For employment?”

Tommy bit the inside of his cheek. 

“Little bit of this, little bit of that. I teach yoga, walk dogs. Do stand up comedy.”

“Well, how fascinating. Jonathan, we’re so happy you could join us.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Vietor. The pleasure is all mine. You have a lovely house.” 

“I have to say I was surprised when I called Thomas and you answered the phone this morning.”

“Oh?”

“You see, I didn’t realize Thomas was dating again. He’s been so hung up on Katherine for over a year now. Thomas, I was afraid you were going to pine away to nothing at one point.” 

“We’re not dating,” Tommy said.

His parents visibly relaxed. 

Tommy steeled himself, then soldiered on. “The fact is—mom, dad—we’re married. We got married.”

“In Vegas,” Lovett added, helpfully. “It was really romantic.” He held up his left hand and waggled his fingers, showing the arcade prize ring that Tommy had given him, a hasty twenty-five cent purchase from the lobby of the pinball museum. For a brief moment, detached from the terrible telenovela unfolding in front of him, Tommy thought that he needed to buy Lovett a real ring, a beautiful ring, as soon as possible. He needed one too. (His was in his pocket; it hadn’t fit.) 

There was a heavy silence, during which Tommy fixed his gaze on Lovett’s adoring brown eyes; even Lovett couldn’t fail to notice the horrible quality of the silence, though. After a long beat, he looked over at Tommy’s parents, his expression contorting in surprise. 

Reluctantly, Tommy looked at his parents too. They were—well, his father hadn’t quite dropped his fork, but that seemed to be because he was white-knuckling it. His mother looked—entirely impassive. Which was a very bad sign. 

“Thomas,” she said, voice low, careful. “You’re joking.” 

Tommy needed—just a quick moment before speaking, to make sure his voice didn’t crack. He nodded, winced, then shook his head.

“Good God,” his father said. “If it weren’t for”—he gestured at Lovett—“I’d say it was a shotgun wedding. As it is, Thomas, what were you thinking?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Lovett said. “Even if I did have a uterus, _that_ wouldn’t be the reason. We just met yesterday!”

Tommy’s parents stared. They positively gaped, a very un-Vietor-like thing to do.

“Lovett,” Tommy began, voice weak. “Could you please…” He trailed off, trying to psychically communicate his desire for Lovett to just _be quiet_ for a minute so he could do damage control. Lovett frowned at him.

His mother cleared her throat. “Thomas, why would you do this to us? Are you punishing me? I may have strongly suggested you take the promotion at Keenan, Rhodes, & Pffiefer instead of working for the city”—she uttered these words in the tone one might use to say _for organized crime_ or _for a reality TV show_ or something equally unsavory—“but I assured you it _was_ your decision to make.”

“Mother,” Tommy said. “This isn’t—I’m not—look, would you just trust me on this? I know it’s a little unconventional, but I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” she replied, voice tight. “Perhaps we should have your head examined. Perhaps you’re on—on drugs. Acid, mushrooms, whatever gets you people rolling around in the grass at Golden Gate Park.” She flapped her hand at Lovett and then pressed it to her temple, wincing, like his presence was giving her a migraine.

Lovett squinted. “You’d really see more of relaxed demeanor, maybe dilated pupils, if he was on mushrooms, Mrs. Vietor. Hallucinogens typically—”

Tommy stepped on his foot.

“Ow! What?”

_“Lovett,”_ Tommy hissed, pained. “Stop.”

“No, do go on, Jonathan,” his mother said, taking a long drink of her vodka tonic. “Educate us. I want to be able to identify the signs that my son is, what’s the phrase, _tripping balls._ For future reference.”

Tommy stood up. “Mother. Can we _please_ just have lunch. We can talk about this later.” 

“Well, take your seat, son. Don’t stand there bellowing at us,” his father said. 

He sat back down, picking his napkin off the floor, where it had fallen. Deep breath in, slow exhale. Again. He surveyed his plate, picked up his fork, took a small bite of salmon. 

“The salmon is excellent,” he said, voice admirably even. 

“It is,” his dad echoed. 

“Would you like some more chardonnay, Thomas?” his mother asked, already filling Tommy’s glass.

“Thank you.”

“Kitty, why don’t you tell us about the fundraiser you’re organizing this weekend?”

“Certainly. Well, it’s a luncheon, so I thought we could play tennis together early, Thomas.”

“Alright.”

There was a clatter—Lovett knocking his glass against his plate as he set it down. Tommy had been avoiding looking at him, and this was why; he looked heart-wrenchingly baffled. Tommy wanted to run a soothing hand down his back, but he didn’t. “Wait, seriously?” Lovett said. “We’re just going to ignore what just happened, what everyone’s actually feeling, to talk about, like, the weather?”

“Well, technically we’re talking about my mother’s charity luncheon,” Tommy said, slowly.

Lovett narrowed his eyes.

They stared at each other. 

_Please drop it,_ Tommy thought. _Please._

_Trust me,_ he thought.

Lovett didn’t trust him though, apparently. He barreled on. “Look, I think we should talk about this. Get how we’re feeling out here in the open. Work through it. Mr. Vietor, Mrs. Vietor, you’re hurt that Tommy made this important life decision without involving you—which makes a lot of sense.

“And Tommy, you’re feeling guilty that you did that—“

“I am _not.”_

“—but you also want your parents to be happy for you.”

“Lovett—”

“Why don’t you tell Tommy how you’re feeling?” Lovett said to Tommy’s parents.

“It seems like you’re managing that for all of us just fine,” Tommy’s mother said crisply.

Somehow, Lovett was not cowed by this. “He wants to hear it from you. Go on, look him in the eyes and tell him how you’re feeling.”

“Fine. Thomas, I am _angry_ with you for subjecting us to this farcical encounter. If you want to make haphazard life decisions and tie yourself financially to vagabonds you meet on public transit, you could at least have the decency not to involve us. I think I made it perfectly clear when I caught you frenching Henry Ramirez in with the canned goods that you can choose to do what you want with your life out in the world, but in this house we have _standards.”_

There was a moment of ringing silence. 

_“_ I just hope you signed a prenup,” Tommy’s father said. 

“Oh. Uh. Alright. Cool. We’re, uh, making progress.” Lovett looked a little stunned. He turned to Tommy, blinking. Tommy had his arms clasped tightly across his chest, and he could feel his jaw clenched tightly too; he felt like a stretched rubber band, ready to snap in some unpredictable direction. “So, Tommy, can you tell your mother that you’re hearing her? And, uh, what you’re feeling?”

Tommy felt a muscle twitch in his jaw. “I’m feeling like this lunch is over.”

 

Fifteen minutes later, they were sharing a ride back to Lovett’s apartment in stony silence. _Tense_ didn’t begin to describe the atmosphere in the car. Even the Lyft driver seemed to have lapsed into moroseness, flicking the radio from Top 40 to classical, a heavy piece with brooding horns.   


“Wow, they really hated me,” Lovett said at last. 

“Well, yeah,” Tommy gritted out, before he could stop himself. “No wonder.”

_“What?”_

“With them, you have to—you need to—approach them with a little finesse, okay? You can’t just—I can’t believe you talked to my mother about mushrooms—” 

“I was trying to help!”

Tommy sighed. “I know. I just wish…you hadn’t. I had it under control.”

“Did you?”

“I’m sorry, did I _ask_ you to become my family therapist? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Jesus, Lovett, what did you expect?”

“For your parents not to hate me!”

“Well, I can’t control how they feel. I mean—I tried. If you had stayed quiet and let me manage them…”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were expecting me to just shut up and look pretty!”

“I wasn’t asking you not to speak! Just to tone it down a little. Is that so hard?”

“Tone it down a little?”

“Just be a little less, you know—“

“No, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

Tommy rolled his eyes. This again. “Okay, a little less out there—unconventional—wacky—”

“Wacky?” If looks could murder, Tommy might be struck down by the glare Lovett was fixing on him.

“Lovett! My parents are old, rich conservatives! How is that not super obvious? Did you think they would be charmed by your woo woo attempt to get us all in a circle singing kumbaya?”

“Right. I just don’t get how, for you, it follows that I should pretend to be someone else around them.”

“Because that’s what people do! It’s a normal thing to do!” It was what Tommy did, every interaction with his parents. What he’d done his _whole life._ And Lovett was somehow above that, or looked down on Tommy for doing it. God, Tommy was so angry all of the sudden. 

“Just, if you feel that way, why the fuck even be with me? Why don’t you run back to _Katherine_ or find some posh guy with rock hard abs and a country club membership that your parents will just _love?”_

“Can you not bring Katherine into this? It’s bad enough that my mother was trying to, like, bait you with that. You don’t have to take the bait.”

“Sure. I’m wacky and gullible and embarrassing and apparently a drugged out vagabond!” 

“Lovett—”

“You just let them say that shit. You probably agree with it.”

“I do not.”

“You do! You didn’t even defend me.”

“That is _not_ true. I did. You’re overreacting.”

“Of course, I’m having too many feelings for you. We can’t all be repressed WASPs.” 

Tommy was too tired to deal with this barrage. “You clearly aren’t capable of repressing anything. You just say whatever you want, whenever you want. Good for you. Must be nice. The rest of us have to read social cues and compromise—but I guess that makes me an idiot, a fucking square, huh?” 

“I guess so!”

Tommy laughed, bitter. “I can’t believe I thought this would work.”

“I can’t believe _I_ thought this would work.”

“Well, at least it’s in character for you. Don’t know what my excuse is.” 

Tommy instantly regretted saying this. But before he could walk it back, call a detente, explain how his head was pounding, Lovett was leaning forward to address the driver. “Pull over!” he said. 

“What?”

“I’m getting out! I’ll call my own Lyft, I’ll walk home, I don’t care!”

“Lovett—I’m sorry—can we just—”

“Pull over please!” Lovett told the driver. “Let me out of this fucking car!”

“Lovett! Your house is right there.” Tommy said as the driver pulled to the curb. He pointed up the block, where Lovett’s giant pink house did indeed loom.

“Fine! Great!” Lovett yelled. He threw open the door.

Tommy wanted to lunge over and grab his wrist, but he didn’t dare. “Lovett, wait, are you really just going to—?”

“Yes,” Lovett spat, rubbing his face as he climbed out of the car. “Yes, I really am. Go the fuck away, Tommy. Better yet, why don’t you go and call one of your fancy country club buddies, someone who really understands you.” He slammed the car door.

Tommy slid across the seat and rolled down the window. “Lovett—” he tried again.

Lovett whirled to him. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I said leave me alone!”

Hit by another wave of shame, Tommy rolled the window back up and watched as Lovett stomped down the sidewalk. 

There was a loud knock on the other window. He jumped. “Jesus!” It was a guy—oh shit, Lovett’s friend, Favs. He scowled at Tommy through the glass, mouthing something that looked like _unimaginable pain._

“I gotta go!” Tommy said, twisting away. He found the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Can you just take me somewhere else, away from here? To Pac Heights?” 

“Give me an address,” the guy sighed, but he did hit the gas.

Tommy looked out the window as they passed the pink house, just in case Lovett was standing outside, waiting. In case he had changed his mind, wanted to keep fighting, wanted to make things up. But he wasn’t there, and Tommy didn’t want to risk Favs catching up with him. The last thing he needed was to get into some sort of physical confrontation with Lovett’s platonic life partner, Christ. So he did the only thing he could that wasn’t calling Lovett relentlessly or asking the driver to circle the block like a creep. He took Lovett’s shouted advice; he left him alone. He went home. 

 

Once home, in his bed with his comforter pulled up over his head, Tommy tried to comfort himself with the possibility that Lovett might call him once he calmed down. Then he realized that Lovett didn’t have his phone number. They hadn’t been apart, since Lovett appeared like a lucky penny in Tommy’s office, so they hadn’t traded numbers. 

Well, fuck. 

At least Tommy could stop staring at his phone like it contained a magic genie waiting for the perfect moment to emerge. If Lovett wanted to find him—or his phone number—he certainly could; he had proven that much. 

The rest of the week went by, however, and Lovett didn’t call. He didn’t turn up at Tommy’s office or on his doorstep. Saturday morning, Tommy couldn’t stand it anymore. He went to the Haight to Lovett’s house and, barring any other option, knocked on the front door, the door to the conservatory, bracing himself for what would happen next. 

A middle aged woman who could only be Lovett’s mother opened the door. She was, thank God, entirely clothed, wearing a batik tunic over leggings smeared with paint and potting soil, purple crocs on her feet. So the colorful shoes thing ran in the family, Tommy thought. 

“Hello,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m here to see Lovett. I’m his, uh—that is, I’m—”

“Tommy, yes, I know. You’re Lovett’s husband. Come on in.”

With a fortifying deep breath, Tommy stepped inside and followed Lovett’s mother across the humid room. “So, Lovett, he’s—?”

“Oh, he’s not here. At work, I imagine. Saving the day with Favs in the newsroom. But I figure we might as well talk, since you’ve come all this way.”

Tommy half expected her to…read his palm or consult his star chart or something, but instead she led him to a round cafe table tucked into the corner of her green house. Tommy took a seat on a folding metal chair, which was rusting with age but seemed structurally sound, and watched as Mrs. Lovett flicked on an electric kettle that shared space on a work bench with pots and twine, clippers and other garden implements. “Tea?” she asked, already readying two mugs.

“Okay.” Tommy shifted in his chair. Lovett wasn’t here, and it suddenly seemed like a terrible idea that he had come. “You’re not, ah, angry with me, Mrs. Lovett?”

“Christ, dear, call me Abby. Should I be?”

“Uh?”

“Angry with you?”

“Lovett and I had a fight,” Tommy said.  

“Couples fight. That’s true whether you’ve been together thirty years or—”

“Three days? He really did tell you the whole story,” Tommy said ruefully.

“We’re pretty honest with each other,” she replied, giving him a mug and patting his hand. “That’s how we taught him to be, me and Larry.” 

“He’s good at it, being honest. Saying what he thinks. I guess it took me by surprise. It’s not something I’m used to.”

“He’s a real straight shooter,” Abby said, smiling.

“The way I grew up,” Tommy began, then amended, “I mean, in my house, we’re more…” He struggled to find the right words, blew on his tea, set the mug down with a sigh. “Buttoned up about our thoughts and feelings.” 

“You seem like a fairly forthright young man to me. I don’t think Lovett would like you so much if you weren’t.”

“Do you think he does still like me, Mrs.—ah, Abby?” Tommy asked, surprising himself. “I messed up pretty bad, hurt his feelings. And—forgive me, but I just don’t know—if maybe, for him it, ah—it’s one of those things where—” Finding the words for this was really hard. Despite himself, he trailed off with a shrug. 

“You’re wondering if he brings home young men like you every week?”

“Yeah.”

“That I can tell you. He doesn’t. The rest, you’ll have to ask him.”

Tommy shook his head. “No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. I shouldn’t even have come around like this. He told me to go away, to leave him alone. I don’t like to go where I’m not wanted. I’ve done that in the past—come on too strong—and I won’t do it again. I’d ask you not to tell him I came by, but…” He shrugged again.

“The whole honesty thing?” Abby asked.

“Yeah.”  

“You’re a quick learner, I’ll give you that.” 

They drank their tea in silence, and Tommy wondered if the conversation was over or if Abby had some heavy judgment or piece of news she was waiting to lay on him. His mother did that, sometimes—held a winning hand close to her chest until the right moment, until it would have the biggest effect. 

“Well, I’ll”—Tommy gestured awkwardly behind him—“get out of your hair then.”

“Oh, you’re alright. Come on, stay a while and help me repot these plants.”

“Yeah?”

“You came all this way,” she said, though really, it hadn’t been far. Tommy hadn’t even hit traffic. “Let me at least put you to work for a while, regale you with the usual embarrassing stories of Lo as a baby.” She must have seen the awkward twist of his emotions on his face, because she waved away that suggestion. “Okay, we’ll hold off on those for now. But when you two make up, ask me again. They’re a real treat.”

Tommy went home a hour or so later with his own  Pilea peperomioides, carefully re-homed in a raku ceramic pot, and a significantly lighter heart. 

“That’s a nice one,” Abby said on the doorstep, patting his cheek. “You take care of it.”

“I will,” Tommy promised. He cradled the plant carefully with one arm so he could bend to give her a hug. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“Oh, pshhh, anytime.”

“If you see Lovett, if you could tell him…” Tommy trailed off, with a sigh. What he wanted to tell Lovett was too complicated to be handed off, a quick message, to Lovett’s mother, no matter how wonderful she was.

“That you stopped by?” Abby suggested.

Tommy smiled. “Yeah. That’ll do.” 

 

Tommy tried to resume his normal life—all the little routines and interactions that had filled his time and made him tick with a satisfactory level of contentment, before Lovett slammed like a meteor into his orderly existence, shaking things up, terrascaping Tommy’s world so that nothing breathed or moved the same. He hit the gym hard, placed his usual order at his coffee shop each morning, dodging the baristas’ questions about his obvious rocketing stress levels without too much fuss. Yeah, he was a regular, but San Francisco was a stressful city—expensive and changing rapidly, day by day—and he was a lawyer; he might not be operating at his baseline at the moment, but he couldn’t be too far off. It wasn’t until he caught Lynn the Tuesday-Thursday-Friday barista sneaking an extra muffin in his bag, a pity muffin, that he stared himself down in the mirror—bloodshot eyes and break out and all—and had to admit that he wasn’t doing so hot. He was suffering.

“You’re okay,” he tried to tell his reflection, using a brisk, motivational, Dan-like tone. “You’re grieving the unexpected break up of your marriage. Your unexpected marriage. To your boyfriend of twenty-four hours. You’re fine. This is normal.”He tried a smile, but it was extremely unconvincing. 

Someone knocked on the bathroom door. “Come on. There’s a line.”

“Sorry,” Tommy said, opening the door, but the woman who had been waiting just gave him a suspicious look, a once-over that lingered on his arms and his athletic bag, like she thought he’d been stealing the toilet paper or shooting up. Great.

Tommy’s coffee order was ready. 

“You take care, now,” Lynn told him. She’d made him a latte with a little heart in the foam instead of an Americano. Clutching the coffee, Tommy texted Dan one-handed, _Don’t feel well not coming in today._

_Again??_ Dan responded immediately. Tommy turned his phone off.

Then he walked to his park, not bothering to turn his phone back on so he could put in his headphones. He trudged past his usual spot, up, up, to the highest part of the hill, the loneliest bench, fully exposed to the wind. He’d just sit here for a while and think, maybe, about his life choices. Two weeks ago, he’d met Lovett. Two weeks! It was crazy, how fast a person’s life could change. After a while, he noticed he had some brambles and a smear of yellow pollen on his pants. He was gripping his empty, cold coffee cup in his hands, and he put it down beside him to run one fingertip through the pollen.

Someone cleared their throat. Tommy snapped out of his daze, looking up right at—right at—“Lovett?”

“Hey, it’s me, surprise,” Lovett said in a rush. He had a beanie pulled low over the tips of his ears, flattening his curls against his forehead, and he was wearing one of those puffy down jackets, his hands jammed in the pockets. He looked good. It hadn’t been a fluke, their pheromone-drunk escapade two weeks ago; just being in the same space as Lovett, his small, bundled up body and his fierce brown eyes, made Tommy’s breath catch, lit up his entire body like Lovett’s presence completed an electric circuit. 

“You’re up early,” Tommy said, for some reason, random words popping out of his mouth.

“Dude, it’s 9AM.” 

“Oh. Well, still.”

Lovett stared at him.

“How did you find me here?” Tommy asked.

“I realized you were serious about leaving me alone.”

“Well, yeah. You did yell it at me more than once.” Tommy paused and thought. “We would have had to, uh, work out the divorce at some point, but—”

Lovett raised a palm, and Tommy was more than happy to have that sentence cut off. “What I was saying,” Lovett continued, “is I realized I’d have to come give you an opportunity to apologize.”

“Oh. That’s funny.”

Lovett’s shoulders stiffened. “How so?”

“I mean, it works out, because I happen to have an apology ready.” Tommy cleared his throat. “Lovett, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be fighting with you. I’m not the best when I’m around my parents. What they want has always been so loud, it drowns me out, and I can’t think. And if I—when I suggested you should be less, should be different around them, or anytime, I shouldn’t have, and I didn’t mean it.”

Lovett looked down at his sneakers. Bright pink today. “Can I sit next to you?”

Tommy nodded, though something about the solemnity of the moment made him wish he was on the ground, on one knee, instead, proposing to Lovett for real. A silly idea, but worth revisiting later. He moved his empty coffee cup and his gym bag from beside him on the bench to the ground so he could maybe, maybe put an arm around Lovett. Lovett sat down and then moved close to Tommy, so he was pressed against Tommy’s side, and before Tommy could wrap him up, he took Tommy’s hands in his own. They were warm, from being shoved in the pockets of his coat.

“Your hands are ice cold,” Lovett murmured, rubbing them. He was wearing that horrible cheap ring, which was already corroding probably, and its edge caught on Tommy’s skin, the tiniest jolt of pain. Tommy was fiercely glad for it. 

“I don’t usually sit out here so long,” he said. “I took today off work.”

Lovett hummed and lifted Tommy’s hands to his face—no, to tuck them under his chin. Tommy could feel his pulse beat there, his warm throat, right where Tommy wanted to bury his face. 

“Did you ever read that picture book when you were a kid about the train that goes off its tracks to frolic around in a field of buttercups? And, like, if you hold a buttercup flower under someone’s chin, you can tell if they like butter?” 

“Tommy Vietor,” Lovett said solemnly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But it sounds pretty fucking whimsical.”

“You’re rubbing off on me.” 

“Nah, it was in there all along, under the surface.”

Tommy snorted. “What, whimsy?”

“Can’t fool me, Vietor. You’re full of whimsy. You’re like a double-stuff oreo of whimsy.” He paused. “A chocolate covered, deep fried canoli full of whimsy. Too much? Okay, a soy-free, dairy-free, gluten-free protein shake of whimsy. ” 

“Okay, stop.” Tommy laughed. “Stop saying that word.” 

Lovett squeezed his hands. “Look, I have an apology too, if that’s alright. That whole fight—not wanting to be changed, not wanting you to change me—I was thinking about it more. Like, God, Tommy, I know nothing about marriage, okay? My parents aren’t married. They didn’t really believe in it, that their relationship needed to be state sanctioned, when I was a kid, and then when I came out, before Prop 8 was overturned, they definitely weren’t going to get married, out of solidarity. But I do know a thing or two about people being together, building a life together, from watching them and from building the life I have now with Favs. No, it’s not romantic, but it’s like, what you could maybe call a queer-platonic life partner thing—

“And I know it’s this daily dance of give and take, and collaboration, and holding the other person with so much respect and tenderness no matter what—and, ah, that it _is_ about changing each other. Not like some campaign to make each other different. Like, I still don’t think you were right to say I should be okay with being a totally different person around your parents—”

“I know,” Tommy said. “I know that was wrong.”

“—but if we decide to try to make a life together, we’re going to have to accept that we’re going to change each other. Maybe you’ll learn to speak out more, and maybe I’ll learn to shut up sometimes and eat my peas while talking about the weather, or whatever proper boatshoe etiquette is.”

Tommy laughed. It felt so good, to be laughing again, after his somber week.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to make a joke out of it. But do you know what I mean?”

“I do. I really do,” he said. “And that’s what I want too, Lovett. It still feels crazy, this thing we did, but I’m also still excited about it. I’m not ready to stop. I want to see what comes next with you. And if it doesn’t work out, I want it to be because we decide we don’t want to be together, that we’re not a good fit, not because our parents—or anybody—tripped us up. And definitely not because I was worried about what my parents think about our relationship,” he amended.

“Our first fight.” Lovett smiled.

“You ready for our first make up?”

“Hell yeah.” 

“Come on, buttercup, let me show you my apartment.”

They made their way down the hill and out of the park, walking side by side, which was really nice; despite their height difference, he and Lovett could hold hands pretty comfortably. A familiar dog walker and a mom and kid he recognized from his coffee shop strolled past them, exchanging small smiles of recognition with Tommy, and that was nice too, sharing Lovett with his small community—like, the people in his neighborhood could see them and think, oh, there’s the guy from the gym, and look, there’s his special person.

Tommy paused on the front step of his building, keys in hand. “Actually, do you want to go to yours?”

“What, do you have a body upstairs? Your bit of stuff on the side?” 

“It’s just…Pundit and Lucca are at your place.” He hesitated. “And Favs. It’s more of a home.”

Lovett smiled, slow and warm. “You’re thinking about my giant bed, aren’t you?”

“Maybe a little bit,” Tommy admitted. 

They did go upstairs, long enough for Tommy to throw some clothes in a duffle and grab his new plant. Maybe it was overkill, maybe he’d be back later in the day, but he hoped not. He wanted to curl up with Lovett and not think about being apart from him again until completely necessary.

Lovett offered to carry the plant while Tommy locked up. “Look at this buddy,” he said, rotating it. “This is a really cool plant.” 

“Your mom gave it to me,” he said. “It’d be bad luck if it died.”

“Mm. It looks really happy right now.” 

“I can take care of things!” Tommy insisted.

“Alright,” Lovett demurred. “You can prove it by taking care of yourself today—taking a shower, sleeping more than five hours in a row, and eating a full meal, how’s that?” 

On cue, Tommy’s stomach grumbled. The pity muffins hadn’t been very filling, after all. “You’re going to cook for me?” he asked.

“Nah, Favs is gonna make pancakes.”

“He is?”

“Of course he is. He always makes pancakes on Wednesdays.” 

“Right, of course. Wednesday pancakes.” Tommy waited for more of an explanation, but Lovett just shrugged.

“It’s a tradition,” he said.

“Can’t argue with that.”

Before Tommy could pull up a rideshare app, Lovett nudged him in the direction of an honest to God 1990s Dodge Neon that was crookedly parked in the yellow loading zone of Tommy’s building. It was aggressively emerald in color, with a dented front bumper and dog hair all over the seats. Lovett unlocked it manually and climbed inside. “Figured I’d spare a Lyft driver from having to put up with us arguing.”

“Arguing?”

“Okay, arguing or groping. I wasn’t sure. Point is, you really shouldn’t support those companies. They’re pretty exploitative. Call an actual taxi, y’know? Union labor.”

Tommy settled the  Pilea peperomioides in his lap and did up his seatbelt, as Lovett started the car. “You’re right,” he said, biting back not just a smile but the _I love you_ that was springing inopportunely to his lips. “Though I think you could make the argument that…”

And they were off, an easy back and forth debating the issue, a quick dash down Fillmore Street to Lovett’s big pink house, his driving not as frightening as Tommy had expected. Pundit and Lucca greeted Tommy with an enthusiasm he tried to savor, knowing that he’d likely get a frostier reception from Favs. Tommy had showered at the gym, but he still felt kind of gross, as if the chill from the park and the gloom of the past week were clinging to his skin; he let Lovett push him toward the shower (“well, the bath—you’ll see!”). Then, significantly fresher and more relaxed, he finally, finally, got to properly reunite with his husband, tackling him to his giant bed. It was softer than Tommy had imagined, an utter dream of a space to roll around with Lovett. 

“Missed you,” Lovett sighed, digging his fingers in Tommy’s still-damp hair, like he had the morning after their wedding. 

“Missed you so much,” Tommy replied, so relieved to be able to say the words, to give voice to the unbearable ache. “Kind of thought we’d never get to do this again.”

Lovett yanked him closer, and Tommy kissed him hard, already reaching to undo his pants. 

They had settled down into lazy making out an hour or so later when the sizzle of an amp coming to life cut through the quiet of the house, followed by the blaring opening chords of a punk track.

“Oh, dang, the Foss demo.” Lovett released Tommy’s bottom lip and flopped onto his back, grinning. “That means it’s pancake time.”

“Quick question, is Favs going to murder me?”

“Not so much. He likes you, actually.”

“Uh…” Tommy handed Lovett his shirt, trying to think of a politic way to explain that Favs was probably justified in causing Tommy _unimaginable pain—_ or at least refusing to make him brunch.

“Just trust me,” Lovett said. “Come on.”

They washed up and wandered into the kitchen, where Favs was standing at the stove, both dogs twining around his ankles. Tommy watched as he tossed them each a silver dollar pancake, then added a few larger ones to a plate in the oven, shuffling slightly to the music across the tiled floor in his socked feet. 

“Pancakes!” Lovett hollered over the music. Favs turned around and gave him a high five, but his gaze was on Tommy, appraising. 

“Hey, it’s me.” Tommy raised his hands. “I come in peace.” 

Favs lifted his spatula—for a second Tommy tensed—but he only used it to point between them. “Glad you two sorted yourselves.”

“I had to fetch him from his condo of sadness.”

“I was giving you space!” Tommy exclaimed. “Which you asked for!” 

Lovett rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Alright,” he said. “Go put on another seven inch.” He pushed Tommy in the direction of the record player. “I’ll set the table.” 

“Ha ha,” Favs said.

Setting the table apparently meant clearing off the couch and the coffee table, so they could sprawl out and eat while exchanging sections of the paper and thumbing through Twitter, the news on mute in the background. They seemed happy to fold Tommy into their routine, Favs claiming an armchair and waving him toward half of the couch. It was actually kind of relaxing, carb-loading with Lovett’s bare feet tucked under his thigh, skimming the sports section while Lovett and Favs traded opinions about the headlines and their coworkers’ pieces. 

“You coming into the office today?” Favs asked Lovett when they were finished and the dregs of their coffee had gone cold.

Tommy caught Lovett’s eye, and they shared a long look, in which Tommy tried to psychically communicate all the imaginative things he could do to Lovett if he stayed home. This time, the message got through loud and clear. “Think I’m taking the day off,” Lovett said.

“Figured. You guys have fun.”

Once Favs left, Tommy and Lovett took the dogs out for a walk, but they made it back to Lovett’s bed before too long. It wasn’t just that they couldn’t keep their hands off each other; there was something about the quiet afternoon that was too precious to fritter away, Tommy thought. This holiday from their many responsibilities was painfully finite, and they still had so much making up and getting to know each other to do. 

In the evening, Lovett set up a projector in his room and showed Tommy how to arrange his many pillows into a comfortable incline against the headboard. Three episodes into _House of Cards_ , Favs came home and slipped under the covers with them on Lovett’s other side, picking up Lucca and then resettling her in his lap. 

“God, you’re watching this again?” he said. 

“Shut up. It’s good. Tommy hasn’t seen it.”

Favs leaned around Lovett to raise his eyebrows at Tommy, and Tommy found himself smiling back. “One of the best things about new relationships is making the other person watch all your favorite shit.” 

They passed out like that, the three of them and the dogs cozy in Lovett’s enormous bed, Lovett warm against Tommy’s side, the street sounds and lights flickering across the ceiling unfamiliar but calming, something he could get used to. 

In the morning, he woke up to Lovett wriggling close but not close enough. He had to pull Lovett on top of him so he could run his hands over his full thighs. Lovett yawned and stretched, his back arching. 

“‘Morning,” Tommy murmured, tugging Lovett down till he was settled on his chest. “You’re so flexible.”

Lovett snorted. “Believe me, I work at it.”

“Yoga?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to do the hot yoga classes at my gym,” Tommy said.

“Okay, so you know the basics of how yoga works.”

“Mmhmm. Well, the physical, work out part. Not so much the…” 

“Quieting the mind part?”

“You should show me how to quiet my mind someday. I mean, besides this”—Tommy gestured between them—“this is extremely effective, but not something I can do in the middle of a court room.”

“No, I get it.” Lovett traced his fingers over Tommy’s collarbones. “My mind used to race all the time. I got way more into practicing when I learned I could try to quiet it down.”

“Oh.” 

“One time my teacher said, your yoga practice is for yourself, like a tooth brush, not for other people. But I can show you some stuff.”

“We shared a toothbrush. When we were in Vegas.”

“Which is objectively gross, by the way.”

“Hey, are you saying my mouth is gross?”

“You can’t fight me on this. Toothbrushes are not to be shared. Because it’s your gross mouth, which I love—well, provisional pass. But in general, Tommy Vietor.”

At this, Tommy had to roll Lovett over and press his gross, beloved mouth to Lovett’s soft stomach, where his sleep shirt was rucked up, and then to his neck and behind his ear. His curls were sticking up every which way, and they tickled Tommy’s nose when he buried his face in Lovett’s hair. Lovett laughed, squirming and then stretching out beneath Tommy’s touch.

“You’re so talented,” Tommy marveled. “I can’t believe you do all the things you do.” 

“Multi-talented, or as some would say, a vagabond dilettante. I suppose now that I’ve married into the moneyed class my many pursuits can be seen as charmingly eccentric hobbies.”

Tommy made a frustrated sound, then frowned, considering. “You don’t let stuff like that get to you, though, people putting you down, being small-minded.” 

Lovett sighed. “You think I’m this…free spirit.”

“Aren’t you? I mean—not in some flighty, commodified way—and I’m not saying you’re this manic pixie dream girl either, fixing my humdrum life with your quirkiness—”

“Excuse me, I pretty much did that.”

“Well,” Tommy huffed, smiling. “What I’m saying is, the way you speak your mind, how committed you are to being _completely yourself_ in the world, and like, your best self—I’m just in awe of that, Lovett.” 

“Mmm. It’s not because of my freewheeling hippie parents though or my, like, semi-off the grid upbringing, you know that right? That I don’t care about what other people think? That stuff—when I was a little kid, it was really nourishing—my parents were always encouraging me to speak my mind, and they treated me as this competent little person, you know? I think a lot of adults, even parents, genuinely don’t like children—not like big terrible abuse stuff, but they do these subtle put downs all the time.” 

“I know what you mean,” Tommy said, voice tight.

“My parents didn’t do stuff like that. They didn’t really make me think I was a special snowflake either, but they built me up, I guess? Or our lifestyle did. And then when I tried to hang out with other kids—let’s just say, my big loud personality didn’t go over so well. I was totally a freak.”

“I thought—I thought you like grew up in a co-op or did homeschooling groups and stuff?”

“We moved to the city when I was eleven though. I actually convinced my parents to let me go to public school for, like, middle school, seventh grade.”

“You picked seventh grade to try out public school for the first time?” Tommy said, with a mix of awe and horror. “Your parents were…really clueless.”

“Tell me about it. I mean, it didn’t last long, my _public school experiment,_ just till the other kids got too enthusiastic pushing me around and I broke my arm. But it was pretty much the same when I was a teenager, trying to join clubs, or sports teams, or art classes, trying to talk to other kids my age. It didn’t work out.”

“Until when?”

“Ah, I found my stride in college, I guess, a bit. And then with yoga—like, first I was just trying to lose weight, but I ended up becoming a teacher once I figured out I could quiet my mind down. You know how your thoughts will try to spin out everywhere, and you’re supposed to, like, gently shepherd your awareness back to your breath? Without judgment?”

Tommy knew that all too well. “Yeah, it’s like herding cats.”

“Totally. So the way I ended up doing that was I’d talk to myself on the mat. In my head, like, it’s okay, sweetheart, come back over here, I need you to be right here.” 

“Like you’d talk to your dog?”

Lovett was blushing, and Tommy realized this was the first time he’d seen him flustered, vulnerable in precisely this way. He’d known that if their life together worked, it would be a project of learning each other, growing closer together, day by day, since they’d started from scratch—but the feeling of it, his heart yearning toward Lovett, loving him, falling for him, was strong, breathtaking. “More like how you’d talk to a lover. Or your best friend. How I’d talk to you. And that’s—that’s how I started to feel comfortable with myself, learned to love myself—I don’t know, that phrase gets tossed around a lot—but to, like, cherish myself, you know? Like wrapping myself in a hug and rocking myself back and forth and just being like, I love you, I love you, you’re okay, it’s going to be okay.”

It took Tommy a moment to catch his breath, to find his voice. “Wow.”

“And because I learned how to do that for myself, I can do it for other people—for you, okay? When you need it.”

“Thank you.” Tommy picked up Lovett’s hand and turned it over, kissed his palm with reverence. “Lovett, you’re amazing.”  

“Is this a good moment to pretend like I am just now waking up,” Favs mumbled. He shifted, pulled a pillow off his face. “I’m afraid if I wait any longer the two of you are going to start to bone.”

“In front of you? Without your consent? Psssh, no way,” Lovett said.

“Alright, I consent.”

“A+ wiles, Favreau. See, Tommy, first he’s watching us bone, super casual. Next thing I know, the two of you are Instagramming pics of each other’s abs on the beach in San Diego.”

“Lovett, no one is going to San Diego, okay?”

“Tom,” Favs stage-whispered. “Tom. We totally invited him.”

“What?”

“To San Diego. But he said he was busy. He had a Magic card tournament.”

Lovett groaned. He grabbed for a pillow and tried to smack it against Favs’s chest. “Uncool! Deeply uncool, man.”

“What? Like your husband’s not going to find out you’re a giant nerd.”

“Oh, I figured that out already,” Tommy said, very serious, struggling to keep a straight face. “He took me to a pinball arcade for our first date. I’m here for it.” 

“Lovett, what’d I tell you—”

Tommy hugged Lovett closer when he fondly said,  “Yeah, I know. You told me this one’s a keeper."

 

♥︎

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this! I'm vaguely on tumblr [here](http://coffeecupandcorgi.tumblr.com/), if you want to say hi.
> 
> A couple more notes on this piece: I played fast and loose with the Vegas details. The Sahara was really neat, but it closed in 2011. Vegas does have a huge pinball arcade, though it's not, to my memory, attached to a diner. The pinball museum in this story is modeled after the Pacific Pinball Museum, in Alameda, CA.


End file.
